Older than Google

It’s really weird to me that lately I’ve been looking around and wondering how it is that I am the same age as old people. Maybe I can ask Google. Honestly, it’s really great to be able to quickly look things up and get the instant answers I need. Facts matter, boomer.  So does instant gratification.

With that in mind, I present to you a list of things I’ve googled this week:

·         Do cats have uvulas? (No, they do not. Only humans have fully developed uvulas, with some great apes displaying underdeveloped ones.)

·         What year did R.E.M. predict the end of the world as we know it? (1987: Long before the pandemic, and a decade plus before the Y2K scare. They were visionaries. And the world’s been a dumpster fire for a while now.)

·         Does David Baldacci’s book The Fallen contain any sex scenes? (Not as far as I could find. Seems safe for an 11-year old reader. Fingers crossed she doesn’t read something she has to ask Google about.)

·         What is Rita Mae Brown’s cat’s name? (Sneaky Pie. She co-writes mysteries. Or at least she did. I’m pretty sure she’s crossed the rainbow bridge by now. I’m sure Google knows when Sneaky Pie passed on but I didn’t bother with that.)

·         Who sings that song I’ve got stuck in my head: “…bow down before the one you serve…” (It’s Nine Inch Nails, brain, not Ministry. Also, it’s called “Head Like a Hole. Please stop singing it to me now.)

This is not a comprehensive list. I’m hitting the highlights. A couple of Google searches required me to open new incognito windows. Sometimes you just don’t want Google telling Facebook what you’re looking at. Not porn, ya perv. Mind your business.

Which reminds me of that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Willow asks Zander “Have you googled her yet?” to which Zander replies, shocked “She’s 17!” Get it? Because “googling” someone sounds like a sex thing. Wink, wink. Willow, the computer nerd, of course, explains that Google is a search engine, because in 2002, the term “google” was not yet lexically the ubiquitous verb that it is today, and only nerds would google stuff. Also, that was the first televised use of the word Google. Also also, I googled Buffy and Googling.

Prior to Buffy helping to mainstream googling ourselves (that’s a masturbation joke), we were all still asking Jeeves. Prior to 1996, when Ask Jeeves was founded, we just stumbled around in the dark, hoping to find a smart friend with a good memory, and/or a bookshelf with the full A to Z Funk and Wagnalls. If you get that reference you’re probably at least as old as I am, which is as old as dirt. In two years, I’ll officially be older than dirt. But I will never be too old to Google.

In conclusion, I love Google. It knows everything. Not like that shiftless Wikipedia.